


October

by illwynd



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark, Death, Dubious Consent, Guilt, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Spooky, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 02:33:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5112986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor moves into a new neighborhood where everyone seems to be really into Halloween, except the old house on the corner…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This came from [a tumblr prompt](http://illwynd.tumblr.com/post/132255085945/so-recently-i-asked-for-spookyfic-prompts):
> 
>  _Loki & Thor are neighbours on the same floor and every Halloween, their complex holds a 'best decorated' competition. A reclusive Loki never decorates his area & thus, their floor always loses. This year, however Thor personally approaches him & Loki immediately falls in lust with his tall hottie of a neighbour. Maybe sticking up some pumpkin lanterns and ghoulish streamers wouldn't be so bad after all..._ (from [fourletterwordsstartingwithl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddleston_loki_lover_au/pseuds/hiddleston_loki_lover_au))
> 
> I'm afraid I did horrible things with such a sweet prompt.
> 
> Happy Halloween, everyone!

Thor moves into his new neighborhood on October 1st, and all up and down the block it already looks like Halloween.  

There are jack o’lanterns up here and there, grinning plastic skeletons and cheesecloth ghosts and straw-stuffed scarecrows keeping watch over leaf-strewn lawns. Fake blood spatter in the windows, or drips of toxic green goo down the doors. Styrofoam grave markers stuck into the grass and cackling witches on the rooftops, and the edge of Thor’s mouth tilts up as he takes it all in.

It seems fun, even if it’s weird to see that the whole neighborhood is already in the spirit of things. Well, nearly all. There is one house that appears not to be participating—the one on the corner, either older than the rest or just far less well kept, and Thor isn’t sure whether it’s just the cheerfully ghoulish decor on every other house that makes that one seem drearier. Chipped, peeling paint of a faded green-grey. Overgrown thorny shrubs choking the brick foundation. Windows dark and dusty. Shadowy eaves that look like they’re probably teeming with real cobwebs, not the fluffy white storebought kind.

Thor hefts another box from the back of the U-haul and puts it out of his mind. It’s barely October. Maybe whoever lives there just hasn’t gotten around to it, or maybe they don’t care for Halloween.

Up the rickety side stairway to the converted apartment he’s rented on the second floor of an old bungalow, wood creaking under his feet and sweat bursting on his brow, the air still warm for autumn, most of the endless, backbreaking work of moving ahead of him, and soon he really isn’t thinking about the other house at all.

*

By the end of the next day he’s mostly settled in. He’s got his furniture arranged and all the most important stuff unpacked, the rest lined up in a tidy pile of boxes in the spare bedroom (which he intends to make his workroom, knowing how infrequently he’s likely to have guests, under the circumstances).

And although he’s exhausted, it is undeniably welcome when the doorbell rings and it turns out to be his downstairs neighbor, Darcy, just as she’d promised, with a foil-wrapped tin in her hands (pumpkin bread, he is not surprised to discover) and a very insistent invitation to come over to her place for dinner.

“Oh, you ain’t seen _nothin’_ yet,” she says with a wink when he mentions how festive the neighborhood seems. “Just wait another week or two. Spooky scary skeletons everywhere.”

Thor nods, twirling spaghetti on his fork. “Even the house on the corner?”

For a moment Darcy looks perplexed, then her eyebrows lift. “The grey one? Oh, no, nobody lives there, I’m pretty sure. At least I’ve never seen anyone in the whole ten years I’ve been here. Dunno why. Maybe it’s haunted?”

They both laugh.

“Oh! Wait, I should also invite you to the party. Not _my_ party, the couple across the street, it’s their shindig, but the whole block is always invited. It’s Halloween night, starts at 9 when the trick-or-treating is over so nobody has to miss out on anything. You should come.”

Thor agrees that he should. He ought to be friendly with all his neighbors, at least enough that he won’t be tempted to turn into a recluse here. Darcy seems like a good start, as she dives right into telling him that he’s going to need a costume (apparently it’s obligatory) and rambles for a while about who on their block has won the contest the last few years—people he hasn’t met yet, just a string of names to him but he nods along gamely.

He tells himself it really does sound like fun. It’s a month away still, but it will be a good chance to get to know people here, and by then he won’t still be bone tired and running on empty from the move and from getting everything sorted out before that.

Darcy takes pity on him when he starts yawning, and she even insists on dumping some extra spaghetti into a tupperware for him to heat up tomorrow, in case his pots and pans aren’t unpacked yet.

“You go get some rest, and just thump on the floor if you need anything! It’s really a great neighborhood—you’re totally gonna like it here, Thor. And you’ve got the best downstairs neighbor of anybody around,” she adds with a little self-deprecating shrug. “So there’s that.”

*

It’s the middle of October before anything else happens.

He’s heading home late one evening, darkness long since fallen leaving the street in a hush of rustling leaves and the faint sounds from the main road drifting through the yards. Someone’s television through an open window.  The hum of a streetlight. A few tenacious crickets. And Thor almost doesn’t look up as he’s passing the house on the corner, out of habit. But then there’s a feeling on the back of his neck, like someone’s watching him.

It turns out there is.

Thor would have never seen him standing there, an unobtrusive shadow on the porch of the grey house, if he hadn’t moved forward, leaning his arms against the railing so that the moonlight shone down on his head.

It’s a young guy, thin, dark-haired, pale, and he lifts a hand in a casual little wave when Thor stops, head cocked, staring back at him.

There’s a twinge of _something_ deep in Thor’s belly, but it’s overridden by the impulse to go and introduce himself. The wave had to be an invitation to do so anyway. Probably the guy saw him move in and recognizes him; it would be rude not to say hello.

Thor cuts across the yard and up onto the porch where the man is waiting, having barely moved.

“Hi, I’m Thor… your new neighbor, two houses down?”

Thor holds out his hand and the guy takes it.

“Loki,” he says, with an answering grin.

Up close the twinge flutters faster, the hand gripping his firm and cool and somehow assessing, but Thor can hardly pay any attention to that when he’s taking in the sight of the man in front of him.

The moonlight makes him look like a watercolor painting. Ink-black shadows and skin porcelain-smooth and moon white, the angles and contours of his face stark and beautiful. Thor cannot tell what color his eyes are, but they are sharp, deep, bright. Dark clothes he can’t tell the details of but the outfit gives an impression of being tailored, the cut seeming a little old-fashioned, but stylish.

He also looks out of place on that porch, which is just as decrepit as Thor suspected, the wood of the railing rotting in places, the pair of metal swing chairs rusted and caked with dirt, as if they’ve been sitting out there untended for years. The contrast makes Loki look somehow even more striking, more beautiful.

“You should come in for coffee, then, if we’re neighbors,” Loki says, and he’s smiling a quirked smile that means he hasn’t failed to notice the awe in Thor’s gaze.

Thor doesn’t even hesitate to follow him inside.

*

Inside is nothing like he expected.

Once they get through the dim coatroom, they’re poured out into a cozy den well lit by lamps with stained-glass shades. It’s warm and inviting; at the back of his mind Thor had been worried about what a wreck he might be walking into, given the looks of things outside. But it doesn’t even have that old-house musty smell; instead the air smells of apples and spices, and just a tinge of woodsmoke.

It’s clean, but not spotless—there is a bit of dust collecting here and there on the shelves and tables. It’s tidy, but not soulless—as they pass through the dining room toward the kitchen, Thor spots the pile of miscellaneous clutter on one unused chair, the one that every lived-in house must have.

Thor sits down at the kitchen table—wooden chairs painted white, a little scuffed—while Loki clatters around getting a pot of coffee going—the ancient stovetop kind—and he looks around at it all again.

It is so cozy and comfortable in here, so different from the way it looks from the outside. But Thor feels just a little bit uneasy, and he has no idea why. Something about the house is odd, but he can’t put his finger on it.

Perhaps it’s just that this is _not_ the sort of house he’d expect someone who looks like Loki to keep.

That’s where Thor’s attention is, anyway. Watching Loki as he pulls china cups out of the cabinet, smooth and purposeful motions that Thor can’t tear his gaze from.

“My downstairs neighbor Darcy told me that no one lives here,” he says, breaking the lull, and Loki laughs.

“Did she? Well, I suppose I’m not very sociable.”

“Is that why you don’t decorate?”

Loki throws a glance at him. “Decorate for what?”

“... Halloween?” Thor answers with a tilt of the head. The rest of the neighborhood’s decorations are visible from the porch; he’s not sure how Loki could have failed to notice.

Loki doesn’t have a chance to really answer, though, as he pulls the pot off the burner and pours their coffee, the scent filling the air, heavenly.

Thor nods for cream and sugar, but he’s watching Loki’s hands, long and white and graceful, and their hands brush when he takes the cup. Heat against his palm and those cool fingers grazing his knuckles, and Loki smiles at him again.

The twinge comes again, stronger now, his heart thumping as their eyes meet. It’s been a long time since Thor has felt attracted to someone. Certainly not this quickly, this powerfully. It feels like falling, out of control.

“So what do you do for a living?” he asks quickly to cover his own nerves.

Loki takes a moment to blow on the surface of his coffee and then sip it, a thoughtful crease appearing in his brow as he does so.

“This and that. There’s always a position for someone resourceful, though I admit I only take the jobs that suit me these days. And what of you? Did you move here for work?”

Thor shakes his head, grips his cup a little tighter. “No… no, not really.”

It’s an understatement; working behind the counter at the service station across town is hardly an upward career move. It’s just the first job that would take him, just like his place is the first he could find to live where everything is within walking distance, or at most a short jaunt in a cab. And the town, which he’d chosen because it was far away from his family and any friends who might have stuck around.

He is still too close to what happened to want to talk about it with a stranger. But Loki’s eyes full of quiet interest tug on something within him.

“No,” Thor says, struggling to put some part of it into words. “I moved here for… for my sanity, I guess. I needed a change.”

“That can be difficult,” Loki says, voice full of sympathy. He reaches over to touch Thor’s hand, thumb stroking the bone of his wrist. “I hope the change will be for the better.”

Thor nods agreement.

He likes the feel of Loki’s fingers, and there is something terribly soothing in the way Loki looks at him, as if he really understands. He finds himself meeting Loki’s eyes with a flutter in his belly at the gentle little smile.

Loki really is very handsome, loose black curls falling just past his chin, softening the sharp angle of his jaw.

Loki is also kind, sensitive, perceptive—he steers the conversation toward lighter topics after that, and Thor notices, and he is grateful. He drinks his coffee slowly, wanting the excuse to stay. Wanting to draw this out, because he can’t remember the last time he felt so at ease and so filled with pleasant anticipation at the same time.

He’s a bit shocked, though, when he glances at his watch and notices that he’s been there for three hours. He frowns. “I should probably get going if I’m going to get up in the morning. I hope I haven’t kept you up either.”

Loki shrugs it off. “Oh, I’m a bit of a night owl anyway.”

They’re halfway back to the front door when he thinks of it. “Apparently there’s a big Halloween party down the block. The peach house with the white trim. My downstairs neighbor says everyone’s invited, but we could go together, if you want.”

Loki gives him a rakish grin. “Are you asking me to be your date, Thor?”

Thor feels his face heat, feels his heart catch, and Loki laughs.

“I’ll come with you if we’re dressing up,” he says, still grinning. “And that will mean you’ll have to come over again soon so we can plan our costumes.”

Promising to do so, Thor steps out into the darkness, where the night has grown chill with the late hour and mists cling to the lawns—getting his shoes squeaking wet—as he crosses them to reach his own door.

*

He’s lying in bed an hour later, sleep evading him, when a strange thought occurs to him.

Mentally he retraces his steps through Loki’s house over and over. The kitchen—they spent the most time there, but the other rooms too. It all seemed so comfortable and pleasant at the time that he hadn’t questioned any of it, but now he realizes that there were things he didn’t see, their absence contributing to his peculiar uneasiness, to the feeling of oddness.

No computers, televisions, microwave. The few appliances on the kitchen counter—a shiny, chrome toaster, an old-fashioned blender with thick, heavy glass and a chip at one corner—were all holdovers from probably the ‘50s. Nothing modern. Nothing new.  

It had been so comfortable and homelike and also so strange because it felt just like visiting his grandparents’ house when he was 10 years old, almost like stepping back in time.

Probably that is just the way Loki likes it, Thor tells himself; some people just don’t care about having all the latest gadgets. Or maybe he inherited the place from his own family and doesn’t bother to fix what isn’t broken.

When he thinks of Loki himself, though, he has the same realization. His clothes had been subtly old-fashioned, when Thor was able to see them in the light—older than the ‘50s, even, something that makes Thor think of the word “dapper,” though he has never once used the term to describe anyone before. Loki’s style felt like—Thor can only liken it to the sound of a half a bar of big band coming out of an ancient radio, static crackling through the tube. It had to be an affectation, though in the moment it had all seemed completely natural.

Thor’s mind wanders as he lies there staring at the tangled shadows of tree limbs cast on his ceiling from the streetlight below. The decrepit look of the grey house on the corner. The dark shadow watching him from the porch. The warm, inviting rooms inside like something from half a century ago, and the handsome man smiling at him, reaching over to touch his hand…

Thor has heard ghost stories like that before, though he feels ridiculous even as goosebumps rise on his skin. He wonders if next time he goes to visit he’ll find no one there; if he’ll push open the door to find the inside just as ramshackle as the exterior, empty and abandoned for years, and a black-and-white photo of Loki on the mantel thick with dust.

He chides himself for his shivering. His nervousness—it’s really just from the sudden, unexpected rush of feeling for this near-stranger (this _very attractive_ near-stranger)—and the almost forgotten sensation of anticipation, of wanting to be closer to someone and finding out that they might feel the same. That is what is making him feel unsettled, uncertain; he’s just not used to this anymore. There’s really nothing eerie about any of it.

*

He waits a few days to go back, not wanting to seem too eager, and anyway the weekend sounds more appropriate if they’re going to be spending enough time to think about Halloween costumes.

Thor hasn’t bothered to really dress up for Halloween for years (aside from little joke costumes he wore to the office) but he’s actually excited about the prospect now. He barely knows Loki and still he has a sneaking suspicion that dressing up and going to a party with him will feel like _play_ , like the sort of fun he hasn’t felt allowed to indulge in since he was young enough to go trick-or-treating. So it’s just after noon on Saturday when he tramps across the lawns, grinning as he kicks through the thick layer of rust-and-gold leaves to get to Loki’s door.

He knocks and waits.

There is no answer, but Thor is patient and he knocks again.

It’s a mild day, warm enough in the sun that he has on only a flannel over his t-shirt, but in the shade of the porch the wind feels chill and it cuts right through.

Thor knocks a third time, and he feels the eyes of the middle-aged neighbor out raking leaves between his own place and Loki’s upon him. He tries to unobtrusively peek in the dusty windows, except it seems dark inside and he can’t see much at all except a few dead flies on the sill, curled black legs and shining green bodies, caught between the panes.

It’s ridiculous to think of old ghost stories now, in the daylight. It’s ridiculous to find his heart pounding fast as he tramps back off the porch and heads home, feeling foolish and anxious and disappointed all at once.

He tells himself he didn’t try the knob because it would be rude and invasive, not because he’s afraid of what he’d find if he did.

*


	2. Chapter 2

Night falls, the brilliant reds of sunset dying into blue and black, and Thor is halfheartedly trying to distract himself with an old movie on the tv, volume low.

So he doesn’t recognize the tapping sound right away, though that might also be because he’s never actually had someone throwing gravel at his window to get his attention before.

As soon as he realizes, he glances out just to make sure, and then he’s shoving his feet into his shoes and rushing down the stairs. He finds Loki waiting for him in the darkness under the sugar maple that hasn’t quite lost all its leaves yet.

“You could have come up,” Thor says.

“You should come over,” Loki counters with a shrug.

And then, when Thor mentions that he tried to earlier, just after noon, Loki gives a little rueful frown.

“Oh. Sorry,” he says. “I should have mentioned I’m hardly ever around during the day. Like I said—night owl. But never mind; we have plenty of time now.”

It seems they do, and they decide to take a stroll before they head back to the house on the corner. And with Loki walking beside him, all of Thor’s fears and worries seem truly ridiculous again. But he doesn’t completely forget them.

The conversation from the other night starts up again, as easily as if they’d known each other for years, as if Loki is the companion Thor has always wished he had—someone with whom he doesn’t have to hold back any part of himself, with whom he can be truly comfortable.

Loki makes him laugh one moment, then says something that makes him think, and when Thor answers Loki truly listens, caring what he has to say.

And Thor has always had plenty of friends, has always made friends easily. But never _deeply_. Plenty of people to call during good times. No one he could really trust or rely on during bad. And now, after just a few hours, Thor feels safer with Loki than almost anyone else.

That in itself is frightening. It feels almost unnatural. He doesn’t know what’s come over him.

His heart flutters when Loki grabs his hand and holds it as their steps crackle through the leaves on the sidewalk, a great elm arching over the street, almost back to where the grey house looms.

*

“So what do we want to be?” Loki asks.

He’s brought Thor up to the attic, which is more in line with Thor’s idea of what the old house should look like inside, though probably every attic is that way. The air is stuffy, musty and warmer than the rooms below. The ceiling is low, almost too low for Thor to stand up straight, with slanted beams and puffs of yellow insulation between. A bare bulb hangs from the highest point, just barely lighting the space, casting the little corners in dark shadow. The floor is splintery, unfinished wood that creaks under Thor’s feet. And every corner of the space is crammed with bric-a-brac. Battered old trunks and bulging boxes and racks of moth-eaten cloth.

Loki digs through the stuff while Thor is mainly caught up in peering around himself.

He wonders if all this is Loki’s, or who else might have lived here with him in the past, but the question sticks in his throat.

“Thoughts? Opinions?” Loki asks again, on his knees by one of the trunks.

Thor replies almost without thinking. “Anything but ghosts.”

Loki expression spreads into an wide, amused grin. “Right you are. Indeed, I’d hardly want to sacrifice good sheets for the purpose. And the feet always give one away.”

Loki continues to rummage for a few more minutes, and then he makes a sudden, satisfied sound as he pulls something from one of the trunks. It’s a pair of masks. Old masks—Thor isn’t sure what they’re made of, though it’s clearly not modern latex. Floppy and discolored (or maybe they were meant to look like that), with misshapen eyes and noses and mouths, and tufts of tangled wool for hair. Nightmare creatures, nothing as identifiable as a Frankenstein face or a zombie. Thor almost recoils.

Then Loki grins and pulls one of them over his head, stands up, spreads out his arms. He’s still dressed in that slightly formal old-fashioned style, and the effect is… odd. Under the yellowish light of the bare bulb against the backdrop of rough wood and shadows, he looks like an old photograph.

“Monster about town,” he declares with a laugh. Then he seems to take in Thor’s expression. “Too much? Likely to terrify small children? That used to be the point of Halloween, you know. Ah, well.”

In the end, they agree to go as undertakers.

Loki has the idea when he finds a pair of black silk top hats in one of the trunks. From there, he finds a black suit with long tails, metal hangers clanking as he pushes through the garments on the rack.

The jacket molds itself perfectly against Thor’s shoulders when he tries it on, and Loki looks him over, tweaking the collar, tip of his tongue poking out between his teeth, before showing him himself in a dusty mirror off at the other side of the attic.

Standing side by side they already look the part, the shadows making them both look gaunt and eerie.

“Oh, yes. This will be perfect. A bit of makeup and we’ll be as frightful as you please,” Loki says in almost a whisper, leaning in, top hat perched on his head. He gives their mirror selves a wicked grin.

_Undertakers_. The thought makes Thor a little queasy. It feels too real, too much of a reminder.

(Driving past the memorial, the piles of flowers, white-knuckled. Coming across the notice in the paper and suddenly trembling so hard he couldn’t hold the mug in his hand, the sound as it shattered like breaking glass.)

But he tries not to think about that. And he likes the way they look together in the dim mirror, Loki’s arm snaking around his waist, tugging him close.

He thinks of ghost stories again, though he still knows it’s ridiculous. Ghosts don’t take you up to their attic and show you old Halloween masks.

But maybe he likes the silly little bit of fear, the foolish doubts, his instincts telling him to be careful and his interest in his strange neighbor overriding them. It feels dangerous, but pleasantly so.  

By the time they head back downstairs—even more welcome and comfortable after the attic—it’s getting late again, and Thor reluctantly bids Loki goodnight.

Loki seems to be thinking of something else, though, hesitating.

“There is one thing I should mention,” he says, just as they reach the door. “I really… don’t socialize much. I do want to go with you. But don’t tell anyone who I am or where I live, all right? I can just go as your friend. Your _date_ ,” he adds with a mischievous wink.

And Thor promises, though the twisting twinge in his belly won’t let him ignore how strange a request it really is.

*

That night, lying in bed sleepless, Thor decides that Loki must be a squatter. That’s the only rational explanation.

He doesn’t want anyone to know he lives in the supposedly vacant house. The things in the attic—the jacket that fit Thor and could never have fit on Loki’s smaller frame—and the old-fashioned clothes that must have belonged to the previous owner, just like all the ancient appliances. Loki does odd jobs, as he said, for a little spending cash, sneaks in and out, won’t open the door in daylight so that none of the neighbors ever see him. Electricity, though, how does he deal with the power bill coming to a supposedly empty house? Maybe he’s got the place wired up illegally, stealing from one of the nearby poles.

It makes complete sense. Thor tells himself he believes it.

And even if that’s what it is, he doesn’t care. He likes Loki already far too much to judge him for how he lives.

*

A few days later, Thor takes a detour on the way home and splurges. He picks up a couple of big pumpkins, an extra-large bag of candy for trick-or-treaters, a few spooky decorations for his door and windows; even though Darcy already has her own stuff out on the lawn, that doesn’t mean he can’t make an effort with the top half of the building.

He spends the evening making jack o’lanterns, scooping out a sloppy mess of stringy orange strands and white seeds and carving scary pumpkin grins while a cheesy old horror movie plays in the background.

It’s been a long time since he has felt particularly fond of Halloween, a long time since he actually stuck his hand in pumpkin guts, but it’s fun.

He’s just setting them out at the bottom of the stairs when Darcy appears.

“Hey!” she calls out, red lips spread in a smile. “Look who’s getting in the spirit!”

Thor shrugs. “Yeah, guess I am. Neighborhood influence.”

“See, I knew you’d like it here.”

Thor has a sudden strong urge to tell her about Loki—aside from Loki himself, she’s the closest he has to a friend here, and he’s been brimming with the thrill of a new relationship, overflowing and with no one to gush to—no one to tell about his sweet, handsome, hot date with the attic full of crazy masks and the house that always smells like pie and coffee and cozy fireplaces, his date who likes to crunch through the leaf piles in his old-fashioned boots and grin at the moon and grab Thor’s hand while they talk for hours about everything and nothing. Of course he can’t, though. No matter the circumstances, whether his guesses are right or wrong, it’s obvious that Loki is living there in secret. It’s obvious that he would not want Thor spreading the word around. So he bites his tongue. Smiles, warmth invading his chest at just the thought of him—warmth and something jittery even now, because Loki is still so much a mystery to him, but one he can imagine spending the rest of his life exploring.

“Decided about whether you’re gonna make it to the party?” Darcy continues, leaning against the railing.

“Yeah, I think I am,” Thor replies.

“Ooo,” Darcy says. “Whatcha gonna be?”

A pair of tall, dark figures in a dusty mirror, Loki leaning close to whisper in his ear…

Thor puts a finger to his lips and winks. “It’s a secret.”

*

Only a few days left till Halloween, and all around the neighborhood it is indeed, as Darcy said, _spooky scary skeletons everywhere_.

It’s not just that everyone has gotten their decorations completed, though that’s also true. Nature itself has gotten in on the act. The fallen leaves, shifting hues of red and yellow and brown, were pleasant before, the faint dry cinnamon scent pervading everything. But a nighttime rain has turned it all to damp, slick brown, and Thor breathes the smell of leaf rot and wet soil when he walks to work, zipping up his jacket and shivering a little. The trees are mostly bare now, dark and reaching. The sky is a deep, heavy grey, the clouds seeming to hang just overhead, and they turn the daylight eerie and sallow. A few scattered raindrops fall.

A season of desolation. A season of things dying. It doesn’t feel like just a fun little holiday for children anymore. It feels like a held breath as a monster comes near.

When he passes Loki’s house, the dark windows pull at him.

It’s a gloomy enough day that if there were any lights on within, they should be visible. For that matter, even at night Thor has never seen any light in those windows, and he knows how bright and cozy it is within. It must be thick curtains, he thinks, though he’s never noticed them.

It doesn’t matter.

He has been wanting to see Loki again, has several times gone for walks at dusk and thought of knocking on his door, but something has always stopped him. He doesn’t want to seem too desperate for company. Doesn’t want to come on too strong.  

And anyway, Halloween is only a few days away.

*

The night of the party comes.

Thor gets off work early and heads home, spends the afternoon wielding the candy bowl and smiling at the little kids—all the sparkly butterflies and Godzillas and pirates and clowns, their parents hanging back on the sidewalk as the little ones tromp through the neighborhood as a giggling mass of impending sugar coma—and trying to tell himself they’re adorable without thinking about it any more than that.

As the light turns coppery, slanting down through patchy clouds, the roving mobs grow gradually older, rowdier, vampires and axe murderers and miscellaneous undead beginning to prevail, and when darkness falls in truth, the fluttering starts in his belly until he can think of nothing else.

He’s giddy with anticipation, breathless. He lights the candles in his jack o’lanterns—flare of flame, whiff of sulfur, hint of wax—and glances down the street to the darkest corner, the house where no trick-or-treaters have stopped the whole time, and then, unable to wait any longer, he leaves the half-filled bowl at the bottom of the stairs and goes back up to start getting ready.

He changes clothes with his brain on automatic. Black slacks. White button-down. The coat, the hat, the tie—those are still at Loki’s house. But he’d picked up the white face paint and the stick of black kohl that Loki had mentioned they would need, and he slips those in a pocket.

He agonizes over whether a pair of condoms should join them. Decides against it for no reason he can discern, and then he spends a while feeling his heart pound, feeling sweat gathering on his skin beneath the crisp white shirt, pacing the floor and glancing at the clock on the wall.

At 8 o’clock exactly, he’s knocking on Loki’s door.

Loki grins wide when he sees him, gestures for him to come in and make himself at home.

*

The house is just as warm and pleasant as it has been the other times he’s been inside. The scent of apples and spice is stronger, though maybe this time it is also tinged with the damp air from outside.

Outside—at the thought, Thor glances at one of the windows, one he knows is facing the street, always dark, and… and there _is_ a curtain, just as he suspected.

But it’s a white one, thin lace over gauze. Half open, the lamplight creating overlapping reflections on the glass. He can see out, barely. Can just see the shape of a bare-branched tree in the darkness.

Thor swallows heavily, fear creeping up from deep inside, but he doesn’t say anything. Loki is leading him onward, and he tries to believe that his eyes are playing tricks on him. That somehow, somehow this is not what it seems.

Loki has everything laid out in the den for their costumes, and despite the twinge in Thor’s chest, there is something deeply sweet about dressing with him like this.

He watches as Loki puts on his own jacket, as he ties the poufy, ancient-looking black silk tie about his neck with precision, chin lifted, pale fingers adept, and Thor wants to press those fingers to his lips, wants to kiss the sharpness of his cheekbone.

Instead he tugs his own jacket on and fumbles with his tie until Loki laughs and offers to do it for him, which is what Thor was hoping for from the start.

Loki’s fingers brush against his throat, and Thor wonders whether he can feel his pulse racing, the blush of heat inside. From this close he can finally see the color of Loki’s eyes, darkest green under a fan of long black lashes. He can see the pores in his pale skin, so close and so real.  

They gaze at each other for a moment after Loki’s fingers still, until they both smile.

“Oh, this is going to be such fun,” Loki says, excitement in his voice. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a party.”

Loki does both their makeup then, smoothing white paint onto their faces and outlining their eyes in kohl until they look deep and sunken, smudging on a little more to make their cheeks look hollow. Loki’s fingers touching—

Thor leans forward to capture him in a kiss, needing to know how those lips will feel (soft and lively and slightly cool against his own) and Loki’s makeup-dabbed fingers slide back into Thor’s hair, mouth opening for him but shifting his weight so that he is the one guiding the kiss, controlling it, sucking on Thor’s tongue until Thor is shivering with the rush of lust.

But Loki doesn’t let it last long. Thor actually lets slip a whine when he pulls away.

“There will be time for more of that later,” Loki chides. “Don’t want to ruin our makeup. Want to see?”

Thor nods, and Loki fetches a mirror.

Even in this friendlier light they are tall and menacing, eyes deep and fathomless. Thor’s blond hair gleams against the black; Loki’s white skin looks almost translucent. But they look like two of a kind. They look like they belong together.

And they are, as Loki predicted, just as frightful as you please.

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the increased rating and added tags.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has been reading! Your feedback has made this all the more fun. Hope you had a good Halloween!

The peach house with white trim in the middle of the block is unmistakable as the location of the party.

It looks like the flashiest, glitziest haunted house there has ever been, strobe lights bursting white and purple across a mockup graveyard in which skeletons twitch and zombies crawl from the ground in endless repetition. Orange lights spell out “Happy Halloween” across the windows. At least a dozen jack o’lanterns sit in a row on the porch, each with a different expression, some dripping fake blood from the plastic knife handles stuck in their heads. And from within, strains of the Ghostbusters theme song can be heard.  

Beside him, Loki looks terribly amused, and he squeezes Thor’s hand.

“Ah, this would definitely be the place, wouldn’t it?”

Thor nods and laughs.

The party’s hosts—Tony and Pepper, who Thor has met a couple of times since he’s moved in, both casually and when Tony personally delivered his party invitation—greet them and invite them inside, where everything seems to be in full swing.

The inside of their house is just as intricately decorated as the outside, the Halloween playlist thumps and jangles under the chatter of partygoers, and true to what Darcy said, everyone present is in costume. Some of the costumes are really good, too, but Thor looks over at Loki, bone-pale in his makeup and with a little grin quirking his lips under the canted top hat, and he thinks the two of them ought to win on style alone.

The costumes do in many cases make it difficult to recognize people, though—they’re all neighbors, certainly, but Thor barely knows most of them after only a month, and the first one he recognizes is Darcy—a very charming witch, broom in hand and pointy hat and green-and-black striped hose on her shapely calves—who jaunts up to them with a smile, something bubbly in an orange plastic cup in her hand.

“Thor!” she calls over the music. “Hey, great costume—looks totally vintage. Where did you find that jacket?”

Thor glances over at Loki, who offers only an innocent shrug.

“It was Loki’s idea. We found it in his attic,” Thor says. Surely it will be fine, since he hasn’t mentioned where Loki lives.

But Darcy is looking at him with brows twisted. “Who?”

“Loki,” Thor repeats, with a gesture to his left. “My date.”

Darcy’s eyes flit around Thor for a moment before she laughs nervously. “Um, okay, well, tell him he’s got good taste.”

When she disappears back into the crowd, Thor’s still trying to figure out what just happened. It’s not until they’ve been mingling for a while longer that it really all clicks into place.

No one is interacting with Loki. No one greets him or compliments his costume—they all look only at Thor right beside him.

No one sees Loki.

And it is _different_ , somehow, that this is happening in the middle of a crowd, that Loki is peering around, nonchalant, not seeming to notice that as far as everyone else is concerned, he is not there. A woman dressed as an elf bumps into him, turns to apologize, and ends up only frowning in confusion at the air, looking right through him.

It is different from wondering about it in his own bed, in the half-dreaming state where the uncanny seems ordinary, where anything could be real. It is different from a mystery, dark windows lit up from the other side, a house stuck back in time.

He watches Loki, becoming more and more certain of something that cannot possibly be. And slowly Thor begins to panic.

He feels lightheaded as Loki glances over at him, his expression at once turning from contentedness to concern. Loki’s lips go slightly slack. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

Thor tries to swallow, tries to breathe. “No one else can see you.”

“What do you mean? Of course people can see me,” Loki says, so rationally that it only makes Thor more agitated.

“No, they can’t. Loki, what are you?”

“Calm down, Thor. Don’t make a scene.”

Thor shakes his head. “You’re a ghost.”

“A ghost? Like, an actual dead person’s spirit ghost?” Loki says with a little worried smile. “Thor, are you sure you haven’t had too much of the punch? I think someone may have made it a little too strong.”

But that is not actually a denial, and Thor can feel himself breathing faster, taking an unconscious step backward, trying to get away.

Only Loki’s hand is suddenly on his arm, gripping him, fingers pinching Thor’s flesh tight enough to sting, and then Loki is tugging him through unfamiliar hallways. Thor feels as if he's being pushed along on a current. He feels weak, dizzy, dazed. He hears a door snicking closed—and then he’s being shoved up against a wall, Loki’s fingers on his cheek as he peers steadily at Thor’s face.

“You are,” Thor gasps, insistent, vision swimming but Loki filling his field of view, and he is more certain of it now than anything. “You’re a ghost. You're not real…”

“Oh, but I am very real. Would you like me to show you how very real I am?”

Loki’s hands stroking down his neck both ground him and send him reeling. Loki’s palms pressing to his chest so that he can feel his heart beating at his ribs beneath them. His knees feel ready to give out and his whole body is shivering, and Loki—top hat still on his head, makeup accentuating his pallor and the angles of his cheekbones—just smiles and kisses him.

Thor moans against his mouth, helpless. And then Loki is slipping a hand between them to unzip Thor’s pants, pulling him out and stroking him as his tongue traces the inside of Thor’s mouth, and Thor just presses his back to the wall, because there’s nothing else he can do.

Loki is a ghost, is dead, is a thing out of a story that Thor doesn’t believe in, and Thor wants to shove him away but he physically can’t. He’s never before understood the expression “paralyzed with fear” but now he does.

He’s terrified.

But also it’s worse than that. He's terrified, but he has been pushing everyone away ever since the accident, needing to be alone, wanting to get away from everyone who knew him, and now just this, just being touched—he can't stop himself from arching into it, giving himself over, and all at once he understands how lonely he’s been. How close he’s come to going crazy from it.

He’s aroused and desperately needy and so horribly afraid.

When Loki pushes his more firmly against the wall and drops to his knees before him, still touching him, Thor feels he almost can’t breathe.

Loki rubs his cheek against him, the softness aching on Thor’s cock—he can feel his own pulse as he twitches, as Loki hums with his eyes slipping closed. Breath stirring the nest of tight curls. Eyes flicking up to look at him.

“Does that not feel real?” Loki murmurs as he wraps his hand around the base and brings the tip to his lips, kissing the slit softly before his tongue laps against it, rough, wet, tantalizing.

Loki begins to suck and Thor wants to believe he would push him away if he could. But he can’t. He doesn't. When he does make his hands move, it is to bury themselves in soft black hair, hips pushing forward as he moans, the feeling of Loki’s fingers digging into the meat of his ass and pulling him closer practically enough to squeeze tears from the corners of his eyes.  

He’s been so lonely. He’s never been so lonely in his life, and he’s not used to it. He needs _someone_.

The feeling builds and builds, the suction of Loki’s mouth and the way Loki's hands touch him, smoothing down the sides of his hips and then pulling him in again. The sounds of pleasure Loki makes. It is a scene that could be so ordinary. A furtive makeout in the back room at a party, being sucked off by a new and eager boyfriend while he tries not to make a sound. It’s not long before Thor is trembling to pieces, shaking apart and glad for the wall at his back as he clenches his teeth and groans and Loki just keeps sucking him through it.

Then Loki releases him, stands and tucks him into his slacks, zips him up. Straightens his jacket. Kisses him, the taste of Thor’s come still on his tongue. Captures one of Thor’s hands in his own and guides it between them, to his waistband. Forces Thor’s hand upon him and curls his fingers around Thor’s so that he has no choice but to stroke.

“Will you… please?” he begs. “Please, it’s been so long.”

Loki does not wait for his answer, though, does not seem to care if he might resist, just curls their fingers tighter. The hard flesh in Thor’s hand gives a deep, throbbing twitch, and even though Thor just came he feels himself squirming. It’s a beautiful cock, real and warm and thick in his grasp. Thor likes it. And likes the feel of Loki’s body, every bone and sinew, pinning him. He likes the feeling of having Loki crowded against him so that he cannot escape.

Breathing hard, fast. Fog in his mind. He squeezes and is rewarded by the hiss through Loki's teeth.

“It’s been so, so long,” Loki says again with breath humid against Thor’s neck, voice catching as he whimpers. “Oh, yes, please…”

Loki clings to him, writhing, moaning quietly—the party can still be heard just on the other side of the door, and Thor suddenly thinks to wonder whose bedroom they’ve invaded, but his nerves are already wrecked, his guts already turned to quivering mush.

It’s been so long for Loki because _he isn’t alive_. Thor knows it, and it makes Loki's gasps ring in his ears.  

Thor is almost surprised to feel semen dripping down his fingers as Loki’s body jolts and shudders against his.

It’s only a few seconds later that the door to the room is jarred open and another couple tumbles through before stopping, unsure, at the sight of him, their shadows slanting across in the sudden light from outside the room, which illuminates him standing there, one hand lifted.

Loki is still pressed against him, turning—calmly, coolly—to see who has interrupted them.

Thor stares wide-eyed at the couple, the pair in the doorway mumbling a few tipsy apologies before backing out, shutting the door behind them.

And then Thor looks back down to his own hand, where Loki’s come has simply _disappeared_ , like it was never there. Thor stares, unmoving.

All of a sudden it’s all too real. It’s not a dream. Not a nightmare. Real.

The next Thor knows he’s pushing through the throng of the party, frantic and dazed and needing to escape, needing to get home, needing to get somewhere safe. Somewhere away from all this—the strobe lights and the skeletons and the ghosts.

*

The shock of cold in the air when the door shuts behind him is welcome, and it makes him shiver.

Out on the street, it is late Halloween night in every way. A few fragments of pumpkin litter the damp, oily blackness of the street, and a few flimsy white streamers can be seen on the grass, having been blown there from a house just visible on the next block. It is dark, moonless, hushed, cold. Thor walks briskly toward his own house, aware in every particle of his being of the shadowy house on the corner.

His footsteps echoing on the concrete. The shadowy figure keeping frantic pace beside him.

“Thor, stop,” Loki says but Thor is not listening. “Wait… Thor!”

Loki isn’t real, he isn’t alive, he isn’t there.

“This won’t work, you know. You can’t stop me from following you.”

It sounds like a threat, and shivers trickle down Thor’s spine as Loki touches his arm, tries to grab him while Thor tries to shrug him away.

He thinks of the stories, people saying they’re being followed by people no one else can see, being tormented, screaming in the street for the thing to just _leave them alone_. He imagines himself going mad. Or everyone thinking he is.   

“Please, Thor, you shouldn’t be alone right now. You’ve had a fright. I’m coming home with you. I’m going to make sure you’re all right.”

Thor shudders and almost laughs, not comforted by that idea at all. “I _am_ alone,” he says.

“But you’re not,” Loki replies.

Thor ignores him, only trying to stay calm, to not start running, to not start pleading for Loki to go away, because he doesn’t want to find out that he won’t.

When he reaches his own walkway everything is quiet. The candles in his pumpkins have long since burned away to puddles of misshapen wax, the jack o’lantern faces gone dark. He unlocks the door mechanically, ascends the creaking old stairs. Loki trails after, top hat still perched on his head, face upturned when Thor glances back.

Just a few days ago he wanted Loki to come home with him. He would have been so pleased by this. He liked Loki so much. He wanted his suspicions to be just his imagination, the stress of the past year coming out in strange ways and making him fearful and anxious.

But it wasn’t. It was all true.

*

Thor doesn’t know what he expected when the door opened, the lock turning under his chilled fingers, but it was not this.

He has spent the whole month of October getting settled in, trying to turn this place into home. He’s done as well as he could, and only a couple of boxes remain unpacked. Everything else is arranged into a comfortable little space. Bookshelves filled with books he once loved. A television he’s barely turned on except for a few mindless minutes each night before he remembers that it bores him, that it all seems tedious now. A small set of weights that he’s managed to use now and then because he likes the exertion, the mindlessness, except he always soon stops because it seems pointless as well.

He doesn’t know why it feels strange to watch as Loki makes himself at home, wandering around with a somber, thoughtful look on his face.

Having a ghost follow him home, having a ghost in his space—Thor would have expected some sort of torment. Things breaking, flying. Not Loki standing solemn by the bookshelf, running his fingers down the gold lettering on the spines.

“You really are trying, aren’t you?” Loki murmurs.

Thor doesn’t know what he means and he doesn’t care. Only one thing matters right now.

“Why can I see you?”

It is the question, and Loki turns to look at him, wide-eyed.

“I’m the only one. No one else saw you. Why _me_?”

Loki’s mouth twitches and he shrugs. “What makes you think there is a reason?”

“Because there _has_ to be!”

“Perhaps you are just attuned to spirits, Thor,” he says, “or maybe it’s because I like you.”

But Thor knows that isn’t the truth. His throat feels dry, his tongue feels thick. He thinks he’s known all along.

One year before, a sudden flash of something fluttering in his headlights, just a split second before, when there was no time left to react. When all he could do was brace and hear the sound of crumpling metal, breaking glass.

When his vision clears he’s sunk down on the couch, head in his hands, and Loki is touching him, stroking him as he trembles, as he breaks down.

“Thor, stop,” Loki says, and he becomes aware that he’s digging his fingernails into his arms hard enough to leave welts. It hurts and he doesn’t care.

He moans, a horrible, ugly sound.

“You’re a good man, Thor. You are. You didn’t mean to do it. I know you didn’t.”

Thor turns to look at him, horror in his stinging eyes. “You know about… about…?”

Loki shakes his head. “Not really. I know that it happened, not the details of it. But I know you torture yourself over it, and I want you to know that you are good. Someone who wasn’t wouldn’t feel the guilt and pain you feel. Believe me, I know.”

The thick feeling in Thor’s throat makes it impossible to speak. He just shakes his head. And Loki’s hands are still stroking his hair, tender. It’s almost like being a child again in his mother’s arms, being soothed. And that almost makes it worse. He feels the tears hot on his cheeks and he can’t stop.

“You did nothing really wrong. You know this already. Nothing you could have seen beforehand. Nothing you could have known. Yet you torment yourself with every turn you could have taken not to be there in that precise moment. You believe you will never be forgiven for that, for the thing you never meant to do.”

The tears come faster, harder. The burning in his belly. The way his back shakes as Loki’s hand runs down it, over and over.

“You are _haunted_ , Thor. That’s why you can see me.”

Thor still cannot speak. He feels dizzy when he thinks of the past year and what he’d done to try to forget, to try to escape. Leaving, needing to be alone—or needing to go someplace where he might make an attempt at living again. He’d been caught between the two impulses. Wanting to bury himself and wanting to move on.

He’d left his family behind, unable to stand the pity in their eyes. He’d left his friends, with their lack of comprehension, their empty platitudes.

“It was an accident,” he stutters out, choking on his own breaths.

“I know it was. I know.”

Loki continues petting him, and Thor is miserable.

He’d left, and now, the first person he met that he wanted to become close to—the first person he has wanted to be with, really, perhaps in all his life—is already dead.

Thor blinks wet eyes.

“How did you die?”

There is a pause before Loki answers.

“Struck by a careless motorist in one of the newfangled automobiles, while I was out walking. Just out on the street here,” he says. “And the house… it wasn’t mine, but I had nowhere else to stay when I refused to leave. I was so angry, and stubborn, and I refused to go.”

Thor says nothing, darkness and grief welling up inside.

“There was a family, at first,” Loki continues. “Then after the wars it was a widow, and she didn’t mind because she couldn’t see me. And after that… I rather lost track of time. Until you.”

Thor thinks of the old ghost stories again. Ghosts haunting the same place, repeating the same actions over and over, caught in a mindless loop, never able to break free. He wonders how Loki passed the years. He feels a sudden panic at the image. His ears are ringing when Loki speaks again.

“If you will let me love you, Thor, neither one of us will have to be alone anymore. You’ll be with someone who truly understands.”

There is sincerity in Loki’s eyes, and hope, and Thor wants to say yes. But at the same time he has a sudden feeling almost of vertigo. Like staring upward on a snowy night, or walking in the dark and feeling in your bones that there is an unseen cliff somewhere nearby, hearing the wind racing along it but not knowing which step will send you falling over the side.

The fear he has felt since he started his plan to move away. Wondering if leaving was _giving up_ , or if it was making a last try to keep going, to keep putting one foot in front of the other just hoping to someday make it out the other side, and never knowing which it really was.

“... and then someday, you can even come home with me to stay.”

The dark spell of Loki’s voice is ominous. Thor doesn’t know what that would mean, and the words make a shiver take hold of him.

But he knows it is what he wants anyway.  

Loki’s fingers tuck a lock of hair behind his ear, his thumb wipes a tear from Thor’s cheek, his lips press a soft kiss to Thor’s face.  

“If you are going to be haunted, why should it not be by me?”

Thor reaches up to take hold of Loki’s wrist, tugging it away from his face and holding it instead between them. Loki’s hand feels cool, soft. Thor clutches it and his chest aches.

“Will it make you happy?” he asks.

There is no way to apologize to the dead, no way to make amends or heal a wrong. That reality has tormented Thor for a year. But maybe it is possible, and even though it was not Loki he killed, it still seems fitting to try. Maybe he can still do some good to someone.

“Oh yes,” Loki answers, leaning close to kiss him again. “It will.”

*

The dark before dawn and they are lying on the bed, knees locked together. There is a crust of salt, dried tears, on the side of Thor’s nose and at his temple and in the corners of his eyes, and he is aware of the coolness of Loki’s body now that he knows not to doubt his senses—not quite as warm as anyone alive, just a few degrees, just enough to be noticeable over the chill in the room creeping in from the windows and under the doors, the wind that whistled through the trees at midnight gone stealthy and frost cold. Thor shivers and Loki tugs the blankets up to his shoulders, tucks them in around him.

They’ve done nothing but talk and kiss and gaze into each other’s eyes, and Thor knows that he is lost.

He has been thinking of winter.

He thinks of what the first snowfall will be like here. Slow and cold, big white flakes coming down to blanket the dark ground. Hushing everything beneath it, the world descending into silence, with solemn grey skies.

He thinks of that, and it feels familiar. He shuts his eyes and sees himself within it, and he feels he is already there, walking out in the dreary emptiness, alone and cold.

Except there are two top hats on the end table, and Loki’s knees nudging against his.

“I’ll have to go soon,” Loki says quietly, his face inches away, his eyes soft. “I have to be back at the house by daybreak. It’s a ghost thing.”

Thor nods, though it feels strange to accept it, to hear the rules that specters live by and simply nod and go along. Being alive, it's probably not the sort of thing he should know. But he is beyond caring. He needs someone. They need each other. They will be happy together.

They lie there for a few minutes more, and Thor wonders many other things but does not voice them. 

They will make each other happy. 

From outside there comes a faint scraping at the window, bare branches of black trees, and fear or anticipation or the hum of hopeless dread curls in Thor’s belly as Loki kisses him once more, and the clock ticks away the last empty hours of Halloween night.

*** 


End file.
